In Conversation with Lesley Visser

Jessica Mendoza is one of those people who make you want to, as Vin Scully says, "pull up a chair." Throw out a topic, and she's there. Olympic softball? Mendoza won a Gold medal in 2004 in Athens, then watched while the sport was jerked in and out of the Games for more than a decade. Softball won't be included in Paris in 2024, but Mendoza will be tenacious about it being added to the Games in LA in 2028. From her roots as a 4-year-old dragging a bat around the backyard, Mendoza's been a captivating pioneer. A beneficiary of Title IX, she squeezed every opportunity out of the landmark legislation - a scholarship to Stanford (plus a Masters), the US National Team, network television (including calling Jake Arrieta's no-hitter on Sunday Night Baseball), and most recently, the Women's College World Series, aka the Oklahoma Invitational. All this, plus why, as a child of the Dodgers, Brett Butler was her idol. More, please!

There was a time that the USWNT won a World Cup and no one really knew about it. Iconic former midfielder Julie Foudy said she came home from the US win in China in 1991 and her professor at Stanford wanted to know why she’d missed class! Eight years later, the sport exploded when Foudy and Co. won the 1999 World Cup in Los Angeles. She tells Lesley the joy of now being part-owner of the glittering Angel City FC, about what Title IX meant to young athletes, and why the benchmark decree still needs to be protected. Never shy with her opinion, Foudy disagrees with Hope Solo’s charge of a “toxic culture” in the USWNT, and has some circumspect thoughts about the intersection of Title IX and transgender athletes.

She might be the greatest women’s basketball player of all time. Yes. If you’ve ever wondered how dominant Cheryl Miller was, consider this - she still holds six records at USC, the school that gave us giants like Cynthia Cooper and Lisa Leslie - and Miller left 36 years ago. Before a knee injury stopped her at only 22-years-old, she was the scoring/passing/rebounding/stealing/shot-blocking/joyous player that every coach or fan ever dreamed about. Her Hall of Fame brother Reggie was once asked, after a playoff game, who was the best defensive player he ever faced, and he answered, “besides my sister?” As old friends, Lesley and Cheryl talk about everything from coaching (she hated it) to the WNBA (she loves it) to the fate of Brittany Griner (some very strong words.)

The only person two-time Emmy award-winning, beloved actor Eric Stonestreet never got to meet was the late John Madden. They would have been great friends. In fact, Kansas City coach Andy Reid, a genuinely close friend of John's, told Stonestreet the same thing. They're the same kind of guys - all offensive linemen at heart, and Stonestreet's favorite to-the-bone team is the Kansas City Chiefs. He even bought season tickets (now able to afford a suite) above the same seats he sat in with his father as a child. Eric, who starred in "Modern Family" but is an old-fashioned fan, stayed with the Chiefs through all the lean years, then joyfully erupted when Kansas City beat the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV, hugging Coach Reid on the field in Miami. They both look good in red.

He said of course he's going to take recruits to the Willard Hotel. No, Kevin Willard, the new coach at the University of Maryland, has no connection to the 150-year old Washington landmark that sits across from the White House. But he does want recruits to know that playing near the nation's capital is a benefit beyond the court. After an impressive decade at Seton Hall, Willard has another challenge on his hands - Maryland fans have been waiting 20 years for the once-proud program that won the NCAA title in 2002, to bounce back and prove something in the Big Ten. Willard, who scouted for Rick Pitino with the Celtics and was an assistant for him at Louisville, can't wait to get started.

He was the everyday player’s Everyday Player. And on September 6, 1995, with President Clinton and now President Biden watching in Camden Yards, Cal Ripken, Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games streak (1925-39), a streak that officially started for Ripken on May 30, 1982 and ended with a 22-minute standing ovation for the shortstop’s 2131st straight game. In between, he’d been the AL MVP twice, won a World Series, and become as famous in Baltimore as the “Star Spangled Banner.” Cal’s written dozens of books and been the subject of a dozen books. And in today’s baseball culture, which is trending toward “load management,” it’s unlikely anyone will ever touch Ripken’s total of 2632 consecutive games. The leader right now? Whit Merrifield, second baseman for the Kansas City Royals, with 443. Play ball!

Bill Walton and Lesley still disagree. After watching him play in college and covering him in the NBA, Lesley got to work with him for about five years when Bill, Dick Enberg and her did March Madness together for CBS. One night, on their way to an NCAA Regional semifinal, Bill started talking about who sweated the most in the history of the NBA. Lesley said Patrick Ewing, he said Moses Malone. Lesley said Kevin Garnett and he said Ken Kesey. Who? Yes, the legendary author who took LSD with his fellow Merry Pranksters.

It might seem a stretch to think that actor Jason Clarke, the son of a sheep-shearer in the Australian outback, could play the iconic legend Jerry West, but Clarke got a round of applause from an acclaimed writer central to the project. Jeff Pearlman, author of "Showtime," on which the HBO series "Winning Time" is based, told Lesley that "Jason Clarke is the best-cast role" in the production. Clarke worked up to 16 hours a day to capture the complicated champion - everything from his Appalachian accent to dribbling left-handed. And all without the cooperation of West himself. Clarke reached out with deep respect, but West preferred his privacy. West once told Lesley that "Hollywood eats people" and that "most great athletes are loners." NOTE: This interview was recorded before the airing of "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" on HBO.

Twenty years ago, when Maryland beat Indiana for the National Championship, it was one of the happiest scenes in the history of college basketball. Maryland fans had been through a lot, including sanctions after the departure of Bob Wade, which meant no TV, no national presence. For decades, Maryland was considered the poor cousin to ACC heavyweights Duke and North Carolina, occasionally NC State or Wake Forest. Gary Williams played at Maryland, and shares a great story about facing Billy Cunningham and Carolina. Lesley got to cover Gary at all three of his major stops - at Boston College when BC won the Big East in 1983, at Ohio State in the Big Ten, and at Maryland, where he returned to Cole Field House and the ACC. He called Maryland's win over Duke at home in 2002, "the greatest victory ever at Cole Field House" - and this from a guy who saw, in person, one of the most important games in history, when Texas Western, with five black starters, beat Kentucky in College Park for the Championship in 1966. It's Gary's passion for all things Terrapin that's made him so popular, and why the 2002 team will be celebrated all year.

About six years ago, Lesley wrote a column for CBS saying that it was time to put Amy Trask in the Hall of Fame. As we head into Super Bowl LVI, she feels even more strongly. Amy would never talk about this, but there are things people should know about the first female CEO in NFL history. Raiders commander Al Davis wasn't warm and fuzzy with many people, but he treasured and trusted Amy Trask. One critical area she handled was the financial survival of the team. It was Amy's sole responsibility to secure credit facilities (each for hundreds of millions of dollars) so the team could survive. She also settled all of the Raiders litigation - those who knew Al can imagine how exhausted she must have been! They taped this conversation before the Holidays, and she addressed all kinds of topics - but this idea should not be up for debate.

Lesley was with John Feinstein in 1986 for his promotional tour of “Season on the Brink.” It was the Tip Off Classic in Springfield, where 17th-ranked Navy, with David Robinson, was upset by NC State, led by Jim Valvano. She and John went to a bookstore in a mall and waited for people to stop by and maybe buy a book. Sales were slow that day, but the book went on to become iconic, one of the best-selling sports books of all time. His latest book, “Raise a Fist, Take a Knee – Race and the Illusion of Progress in Professional Sports,” is a rigorously researched series of conversations with people who’ve been handicapped by racism. Feinstein, who is white, admits he will never know how to walk a mile in their shoes, but he talked to more than 100 people to help bring all of us into the arena.

When Doug Flutie went to Boston College, he was so far down in the depth-chart as a quarterback that he was known as the back-up punter. But the day after Thanksgiving in 1984, his mythic last-second “Hail Mary” to Gerard Phalen against powerhouse Miami, with Brent Musburger on the call, cemented Player of the Year and the Heisman Trophy. Doug said he’s just seen footage of the play from a new angle, and that he had a man open on the 10-yard line, but fortuitously, didn’t see him. Doug’s pro career was equally unpredictable. He said Mike Ditka made him “play tight, the opposite of what’s best for me,” but he loved the CFL, where he became one of the greatest players in history. In his return to the NFL, he was beloved in Buffalo and earned enough of Bill Belichick’s respect in New England that Belichick let him drop-kick an extra point. Doug shared how that was his last play in the NFL.

No one had ever seen a national NFL pre-game show until 1975, when CBS President Bob Wussler put together four of the most unlikely people to create the ground-breaking and enduring “NFL TODAY.” Brent Musburger, Jimmy “The Greek,” former Miss America Phyllis George and former player Irv Cross have come to life in technicolor in Rich Podolsky’s “You Are Looking Live!” which was Brent’s signature line for every stadium look-in, a sneaky way to show gamblers what the weather was. It’s all in Podolsky’s book, the egos, the drama - even the time Brent and The Greek got into a fistfight in a popular New York bar.